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New County District Attorney Adjusting to Challenges
of the Position
Published: March 15, 2024 at
11:00 a.m.
By: Julie Abbass (Independent Journalist) for
linkinglewiscounty.com
New County District Attorney Adjusting to Challenges
of the Position
Lewis County District Attorney Jeffrey G. Tompkins in
his office on March 08, 2024
LOWVILLE, NY – The new District
Attorney in Lewis County has had his work cut out for him during his first
two months in office.
On January 1,
Jeffrey G. Tompkins walked into an office devoid of staff at a time when
there is not just a general worker shortage, but also a specific lack of
available lawyers in the area.
There was a
murder case in the county in his first week as prosecutor.
He is working
through the ins and outs of being coroner by trial and error, with only one
general training and the nearest forensic pathologist available to perform
autopsies two-and-a-half hours away.
Transitioning
from a defense to prosecuting attorney, various Appeals Court decisions
related to “discovery” (the evidence that prosecutors are required to provide
to defenders) are more clearly defining changes in state discovery laws
enacted since 2020 and demand a new perspective of him being on the
providing, not the receiving, end of the transaction.
Because of his
involvement in a number of cases in Lewis County
as a defense attorney, Mr. Tompkins has to remove, or “recuse,” himself and
his assistant district attorneys (ADAs) for the next few years from any
cases related to people he had previously represented.
“I’m still at the
point where every day gets a bit easier than the last. We’re not quite at
full speed yet,” said Mr. Tompkins.
On
top of all of this, and the general intensity that comes with doing a
new job, Mr. Tompkins has already experienced the public
scrutiny directed at elected officials for some of his choices and work so
far.
In an interview
last Friday, the new DA shared his reasoning and experience related to
issues concerning county residents.
TEAM FORMATION
Hiring team
members was Mr. Tompkins’ first focus when none of the staff,
administrative or legal, that worked under the previous district attorney
decided to stay.
Although the
staff serves at the will of each district attorney, Mr. Tompkins said he
had no intention of letting go anyone who wanted to continue in their
position.
Mr. Tompkins said
because the race between he and the former 16-year incumbent DA Leanne K.
Moser was so tight in initial election results, he waited until after the
results were finalized two weeks later to contact Mark R. Lemieux, ADA for
the past nine years, to ask him to remain in the role.
The final tally in
the election was 3,032 to 2,973 votes, in Mr. Tompkins’ favor, but by the
time he spoke to Mr. Lemieux, the ADA informed Mr. Tompkins he had already
decided to start his own law practice.
Mr. Tompkins’
team is taking shape. His confidential secretary, a full-time ADA, Joseph
H. Hobika III of Utica, and a part-time ADA,
Tenaha L. Sparacino of Rodman, are all now in place.
The hiring
process, however, is not yet complete as Mr. Tompkins continues to search
for an administrative assistant and a paralegal.
Finding lawyers
quickly to fill the ADA roles was crucial to Mr. Tompkins – “I was
desperate to make sure I had help” – so he tapped people familiar to him in
various courts where he has worked.
The public has
been questioning his choices because of some background elements for each
lawyer, however, Mr. Tompkins said he made informed, conscious decisions to
stick with his picks.
The DA said Mr. Hobika was honest about his involvement in a
drug-related robbery incident in 2015 when he was 20 years old which was
covered at the time by a number of news outlets.
The charge
resulted in a misdemeanor conviction after Mr. Hobika
followed all of the requirements necessary to
receive an agreed upon plea deal.
Mr. Tompkins
praised Mr. Hobika for turning his life around,
completing college, law school and starting his own law firm in Utica.
“My position on
that is I’m not going to second guess the state of New York. If they say
this person is suitable to practice law, that’s what I need,”
said Mr. Tompkins. “And honestly, he’s been fabulous.”
Likewise, two
malpractice lawsuits filed against Ms. Sparacino last year relating to
separate real estate cases did not change Mr. Tompkins’ mind about bringing
her to his team because he said he believes she will do well in the town
courts where he most needs her help.
“She’s admitted to practice here in the state of NY. There are always
claims against everybody for something. I don’t know how those claims have
worked out. If it affects her ability to practice, I guess we’ll have to
cross that bridge when we come to it. From what little I’ve heard I don’t
think it’s that big of a deal… it wasn’t the sort of thing I saw pouring
over to what’s being done here,” Mr. Tompkins said.
Before opening
her private practice in Watertown, Ms. Sparacino worked as an intern for
the Jefferson County DA’s office.
She was admitted
to the state bar in 2020 while Mr. Hobika was
admitted in 2023.
CONFLICT OF
INTEREST AND IMPROPRIETY
There are
specific rules that govern what steps lawyers must take in New York State
to avoid any conflict of interest and potential impropriety when an
attorney switches from private practice to a government office. There are
also general rules for any lawyer who may have privileged information about
someone from a previous case that could come into relevance in a new case.
These rules
indicate that Mr. Tompkins has to withdraw from
prosecuting cases against someone that he had represented or was involved
in a case that provided Mr. Tompkins with information that is not “widely
known.”
This does not
just include the cases in criminal and family court that he was defending,
but also, potentially, family members relating to any of those cases that
are currently in the system, but also any that will come to the county
criminal court while the information is still relevant for the next two to
four years.
“I’ve been going
on the two year figure,” said Mr. Tompkins.
“That’s what I know (county) Judge (Daniel R.) King and other judges have
used and I think that’s what the standard is as far as having previously
represented someone.”
He added that the
timeframe may be longer for cases that were “more involved” or if “more of
a friend relationship than just an attorney-client, which doesn’t happen
very often,” had developed.
So far, Judge
King has been sending the cases Mr. Tompkins had been
defending last year and cannot prosecute to Mr. Lemieux as a special
prosecutor – many of which Mr. Lemieux had worked as an ADA. Mr. Tompkins
estimated that there have been between 30 and 40 cases in this category so
far that would have mounted into a more significant burden if another
county had been supplying the special prosecutor.
“I think as time
goes by those numbers will go down and down,” he said.
Because Oswego
County has a new ADA that was a former defender, Mr. Tompkins has been
appointed to be the special prosecutor for the relevant cases.
County manager and budget officer Ryan M. Piche said that although there is
a significant expense in sending so many cases to special prosecutors,
there is money set aside for this in the budget, adding that payments from
Oswego County for Mr. Tompkins’ services there will also help to defray the
cost.
According to the
county’s 2024 budget document, the DA’s office has a budget of about
$700,000.
CORONER SERVICES
With one training
session completed last month and another more detail-oriented two-day
session scheduled for this month, the biggest challenge for Mr. Tompkins is
learning his duties as coroner.
Added to getting used to the middle-of-the-night calls that have brought
him on back roads from Osceola to even more remote locations, the absence
of a forensic pathologist in the north country to perform autopsies and
determine the causes of death has complicated the coroner role.
For years, Lewis
County has shared pathologist services with Jefferson and St. Lawrence
counties, but the person that had been providing those services retired.
Lewis County has
arrangements with the Broome County forensic pathologist in Binghamton and
Albany County’s pathologist to provide services until they are available
locally again.
During the public comment
period of the county board’s March meeting, Ritchie J.
Turck told legislators that his wife had passed away on February 14 and
that he contacted Mr. Tompkins on February 15 to request an autopsy.
The funeral was
scheduled for February 22, said Mr. Turck, leaving “plenty of time” for the
autopsy to be completed in his opinion, but on February 20 he received a
call informing him that the autopsy could not be performed until February
22.
He said his
wife’s funeral was held with an empty closed casket and she wasn’t returned
to the funeral home until February 23.
“This should not have happened,” Mr. Turck said.
He urged
legislators “to provide for your (Lewis County) family the privilege” of
having a local pathologist and avoid the expense of sending the deceased to
Binghamton.
Mr. Turck also added
he would contact the state attorney general and the governor to have the
district attorney removed “if in the investigation of your district
attorney (in this matter) we find out that he’s derelict of his duty.”
Mr. Tompkins
acknowledged the series of events referred to by Mr. Turck and gave insight as to the reason for the delay in Mrs. Turck’s
return for her funeral.
“Anything that
could have gone wrong, it seemed like it did,” the new coroner said in our
interview. “(After speaking to Mr. Turck,) I’m not getting a call back from
the doctor, I ran into a three-day weekend, one pathologist is out, the
other pathologist has got COVID. That’s where we were,” he said.
Even though the
family had requested an autopsy, Mr. Tompkins said he was taught that he
should first contact the deceased person’s doctor to find out if there had
been any health issues that would have been the obvious cause of death that
the doctor would be willing to document and sign on the death certificate.
In this case, the
doctor said there were no health issues but did not call Mr. Tompkins back
until Friday afternoon, at which time there was no answer in the
pathologist’s office in Binghamton, Mr. Tompkins said.
On the Monday of
the long weekend he said he learned that the
pathologist would not be back in the office until Wednesday, February 21
and the autopsy would be on February 22.
The other
pathologist used by north country counties, located in Albany, reportedly
had COVID, Mr. Tompkins said.
Mr. Tompkins
followed protocol when he relayed the message to the funeral director who
contacted Mr. Turck. Mr. Turck then called the coroner directly again,
according to Mr. Tompkins, and said the family no longer wanted the
autopsy, but the process could not be stopped at that point without finding
out the cause of death through an autopsy.
Mr. Tompkins was
empathetic to the Turck family’s situation and acknowledged that with
hindsight, more experience and a better
understanding of the nuances of the process, he would probably do some
things differently should a similar situation arise.
He also said he
is looking forward to the more detailed training
and hopes the county has success in finding a pathologist.
According to Mr.
Piche, Jefferson County is taking the lead on recruiting a new forensic
scientist for the north country.
FIRST WEEK, FIRST
MURDER
Murders are not a
common occurrence in Lewis County, but on January 6, just before midnight,
Pennsylvania resident Brandon J. Shepker, 39, was
found dead at the Ridge View Lodge on State Route 12 in the town of
Lowville after a 911 call was placed by Mr. Shepker’s
friend, Jacob M. Vanbergen, 24, also of Pennsylvania.
Mr. Shepker’s body was sent to the Binghamton pathologist
who determined Mr. Shepker had been strangled,
said Mr. Tompkins.
“I contacted the
investigator (from the Lewis County Sheriff’s Office) that had been
handling this case and within two hours these guys had a command post at
the Sheriff’s station. I went up there and there were three state trooper
investigators, three county investigators, my investigator, and they
already acquired video footage from the hotel and
they were working on a bunch of other things. The way they went about it
was just very impressive – just very professional,” Mr. Tompkins said. “The
way they were able to pin so many things down, it really was amazing. It
was a lot of coordination.”
He continued to
be impressed the next day when five more state investigators were added to
the mix and two teams were formed to head to Pennsylvania to speak to Mr. Vanbergen
and his girlfriend simultaneously, in coordination with the Pennsylvania
state police.
As a result of
the investigative cooperation, Mr. Vanbergen was charged with second-degree murder on January 14,
and arrested on New York’s warrant in Pennsylvania as a fugitive before
being returned to New York.
Although it will
be his first murder trial and the first time he
has had to prosecute such a serious crime, Mr. Tompkins said he feels
secure in the facts of the case.
“Knowing how well
they (investigators) have put everything together, that gives me a lot of
confidence going forward that we have everything that we need. There are no
loose ends. There is nothing, as far as I’m concerned, left to be
determined. He (Vanbergen) may come up with some defense, but… I think
we’ve got responses to everything he could come up with that would make it
look like it’s not legitimate – like a lame defense,” Mr. Tompkins said.
He anticipates
the case will go to the next grand jury, slated to convene in April with
some informal conferences in the mean
time.
MOVING HERE AND
MOVING FORWARD
Mr. Tompkins has
received calls and is aware that some have been made to other county
officials questioning whether he has made a primary residence in Lewis
County.
“I tell people to meet me at the Osceola Hotel early for breakfast because
I’m there just about every morning,” he responded.
Since the end of
last year, Mr. Tompkins said he and his wife left their Camden home and
moved into an apartment in Osceola that is their primary residence.
Now the couple is looking at houses in Lowville for their next step.
“I’d rather be
here at this point, based on the hours that I put in – and maybe I’d like
to put in more hours,” he said. “It’s easy when I’m five minutes from the
office or maybe walking distance… I’m more of a early person than staying late.”
Mr. Tompkins has
also started to make himself comfortable in the district attorney’s office
with some changes.
He is adamant that all monthly town and village court sessions are attended
either by one of the ADAs or himself and so far, he said, they have been
successful.
He has also
changed the way traffic ticket reductions are handled in the county, opting
not to continue the contract with the company that had been providing an
automated reduction service through the Traffic Ticket Diversion Program
initiated during the previous district attorney’s term.
“Part of me – it
doesn’t sit well – the whole process of it where we’re getting a monthly
check back form this company that’s taking care of these traffic tickets.
It’s not the sort of thing I’ve had the chance to sit down and think too
hard about but my first impression of it is not a comfortable feeling. If
you ask me, it’s tantamount to people buying their reductions,” said Mr. Tompkins.
All traffic
ticket reductions are now being handled through the district attorney’s
office, although the tickets can be submitted online through the county web
page for the office.
Mr. Tompkins said
he looks forward to a day when he has enough experience to be reflective on
his performance.
“I’m anxious to
get some time under my belt and then look back and see how it went,” he
said.
If the rest of the year is as eventful as the first two months, Mr.
Tompkins will have a lot to consider.
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